Practical Introduction to Wardley Mapping

Practical Introduction to Wardley Mapping

A step-by-step guide to creating and using Wardley Maps

A step-by-step guide into analysing businesses and their marketplace to develop actionable corporate insight. "Wardley maps" are diagrams of a business' environment which serve as powerful communications tools and guides: learn how to create these maps using a straightforward process, and harness their power in your business.

About the Book

Business strategy has a well-deserved reputation for snake-oil, faddish ideas and un-actionable ideas, often handed down from large-scale enterprise change programmes designed by management consultants. The "Wardley mapping" technique is a simple way to describe the environment in which a business operates, from the fixed perspective of customer. Simple maps allow teams to talk about business strategy and tactics in powerful ways, enabling businesses to achieve their strategic goals and respond appropriately to changes in the market.

Whether you've heard about Wardley mapping or not, have previously tried it without success, or are simply interested in developing your strategic/analytical business skills further, this book will lead you through the process of developing these maps using a few simple tools. No matter your current level of experience, this book will enable you to:

critically analyse the needs of your users - using a concrete three-step process, you will be able to draw maps which represent your current environment

assess the extent to which the general marketplace meets the needs of the users

develop "situational awareness" about the opportunites available to your business, and the threats to it

spread these skills internally to raise the level of awareness throughout your teams

At each step, the book draws on specific practical examples to demonstrate the methods discussed, and through a series of case studies enables you to practice the methods before moving on. This book is aimed at CEO/COOs and "C-suite" colleagues, but will suit people at any level in a business (in fact, having whole-organization understanding of maps is crucial) and will be specifically valuable to those new to management and seeking to make an impact.

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About the Author

Long-time CTO of multiple high-technology start-ups, and author of the technical book "Smashing Coffeescript", Alex has served on the executive management teams and boards of a variety of business operating in different sectors. He is currently writing on the topics of data-driven businesses, strategy tools and empirical project management techniques (particularly as applied to software development projects).

Table of Contents

Prologue

Introduction

Why Map?

Types of map

What makes a map?

What is Strategy?

A car journey

Common strategies in business

Understanding user needs

Tool: the Mind Map

Tool: the Customer Journey chart

Getting to the heart of motivation

Tool: User Need Mind Map

Using the user needs mind map

Make-up of a Wardley Map

The Axes

Anchor: the User

Components: the Needs

Our First Map

Identifying & placing components

Exercise: Car wash example

Focus on evolution

Biological evolution applied to products

Evolution means change

Market forces

Where should my product be?

Case Study: HomeChoice vs. Netflix

A simple question of timing

Industrialisation as a future platform

Relating the Map to Strategy: Change and Time

Fallacy of “first mover advantage”

The currents of a Wardley Map

Practicing Mapping

How most people fail at mapping

Succeeding with maps: repetition

Succeeding with maps: communication

Basic Strategy

Where are we going?

The first question: Where?

The next question: Do what?

Predicting the changes in the future

Strategies that mapping will not help

Final words on strategy

Epilogue

Appendix A: Workshops

Workshop A: Reading maps

Workshop B: Drawing maps

Appendix B: Useful Resources

Notes

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